Catch a falling star

It has been so long since I have posted here and I have a lot to update on.

Geoff and I have been seeing a Christian counselor together since March. Things have improved significantly and I feel like we are on the same page again in our marriage and that we have completely recommitted ourselves to each other and to Jesus. We both attend church every week, help teach Sunday school, and I have been volunteering with our church's preschool program while Geoff helps with the IMPACT youth group on Wednesdays. Logan started preschool last month and he absolutely loves it. He goes in the morning and that gives me a chance to get the house picked up and the rest of the day ready to go. We celebrated his 3rd birthday in April with a Veggie Tales theme party (he loves Veggie Tales!!!) and among his gifts were a Tag reader system that he loves. I started a group at our church for moms that have lost babies called Living Through Loss. I guess there are more moms there than I thought because the group started in May and already has 15 women who regularly meet on Friday mornings in our homes (we cycle). We have been getting together to make group quilts for the NICU babies at our local hospital and we have submitted 6 so far all of which were given out and we are now working on another 3. In June we found out we were lucky enough to be expecting again (we were not preventing but not trying) but lost the pregnancy at 5 weeks 4 days on June 7 after confirmation by ultrasound of a sac (Ob says blighted ovum). We have been fighting with our options for having more children. Because of my IC and scarring problems and my history of losses my Ob said that while she can't discourage us from trying to have more children she would not encourage us either. We since decided that we would try to conceive and are on month 2 of TTC with no results. We know this is all in God's hands and that our Savior's will be done.

With all of that said and with Logan now in school regularly, I intend to try to keep this blog updated as much as possible again.

Dear God,

You stay with us through thick and thin and raise us up in Your arms when we hurt. So I ask that You keep all the loss mamas in Your perfect heart and keep them wrapped up in Your embrace as they go through their journeys with pregnancies or TTC or whatever hurdle they're trying to overcome now. You are GREAT and Your will is our will! We are Your faithful servants and we lift up Your name in song every day, Jesus. We walk with You and give our problems to You and You reward us with Your infinite love and forgiveness!

In Jesus's name,

AMEN!

A chat with Geoff

So here is a brief rundown of how my meeting last night with Geoff went. Obviously it isn't exact or anything but this will kind of give you all an idea of how it went.

Him: I have been praying a lot about this and I need to tell you that I'm sorry ok?

Me: I have been praying about it too and I don't know yet what needs to be done. I want to go see a Christian therapist with you and I want you to go alone too. I do not want a divorce but I have no idea if I can stay married to a man who won't respect his family or his marriage or most of all Jesus.

Him: I respect all of you. I promise I will go see a therapist with you.

Me: So why did you do this and then leave us? What made you abandon your family and me when I needed you most? We lost our precious baby girl and I needed you there and instead you were gone. You have no idea how much that hurt me. And Logan misses you so much.

Him: I know I didn't do the right thing. I need to explain what happened.

So basically he had "fooled around" with a girl he met and even though they didn't have sex, and yes that of course makes me happy to hear, but it does not change the fact that it was still an affair! I am not happy about it still but knowing at least that he did not have sex with her somehow makes it a little better adn gives me hope that maybe we can fix things together. He said he prayed about it a lot and I do believe him there. So we will be trying to go see a Christian therapist who can help guide us in God's word and help us figure out why this happened. Geoff says it was because he just KNEW that something bad would happen this time around so the affair happened just after we found out we were pregnant again. I know he did nto tell me everything but I told him that after he sees the therapist with me the first time that if all goes well and if he is honest then he is welcome back home but it will be a while before I will probably feel comfortable again.

So on this front please pray for and with us. I really want him home so I know what he's doing and so we can start to really heal.

I need to say another thank you for all of the wonderful women who have stopped by to give their condolences and words of faith and love and hope. The group from LFCA is amazing and I cannot begin to tell you all how thankful I am. I had no idea anything had been submitted and now that I know I will have to keep a close eye on the site. I am going to try my best to get around to the blogs of everyone that stopped by but it will be a slow trip because there are 30+ people to get to know now and my counter jumped from 300 or so to over 2,000 in the matter of a couple of weeks! THANK YOU all for coming and for being so supportive and loving. The community of bereaved parents is so tight knit and amazing. I will never forget this and I was in need of the support, it is SO GOOD to be blessed by the love of others. You are all my friends!!!

Jesus,

The days when we don't want to get out of bed are the hardest!! But You walk with us and hold our hands and remind us that things will be ok. You send Your angels in the form of others who have been through what we have been through and You give us hope that even in the darkest of times thing can and will be ok!!! You are an awesome God for walking side by side with us when we grieve or are happy or sad or angry. You are with us always and You bless us in little ways EVERY DAY. It is up to us to see those blessings!

Please bless those in Haiti who still struggle and those in Chile who have been affected by the horrible earthquake there.

Please bless too every parent who suffers the loss of a beautiful baby and walk with them in their journeys.

YOU ARE AN AWESOME GOD!!!

In Your name we pray, AMEN

As lost as I am right now I have to say thank you so much. God has granted me many blessings in the form of friends I did not know I have. Right now I am moved to tears that He has sent angels in the forms of women who feel what I feel who are helping to lift me up and He is reminding me I have communities to lean on even when everyone else around me seems so far away. I am blessed!!!!! We are all blessed!!!!

Psalms 55:22 Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never

let the righteous fall.

As much pain as there is right now THERE IS GOODNESS!!!!! This morning a very close friend of mine called me. She has been fighting breast cancer for several years now and went into remission early last year but was recently told that her cancer has returned. After several rounds of radiation and chemotherapy they thought that she would need a double mastectomy. BUT GOD IS GOOD!!!! They have been praying hard and they called today to say that they found that THE CANCER IS GONE. She is in remission again!!!! She has two little girls of her own and she was so very worried that she would not be able to be around for them but all is well with her!!!! PRAISE GOD FOR THIS MIRACLE!!!!!

Today promises to be another tough day. Geoff and I are meeting for dinner to try to talk in public and have a civil discussion. I love him with all my heart and I am destroyed by the choices he has made. He was never physically or mentally abusive and he was the most caring husband and most adoring father I have ever seen so I still don't understand why this happened. I am still struggling with how to forgive him though. How do you forgive someone who has hurt you and your family so badly?? 

I am running out of options sometimes I think.

I am so lonely right now, all I want is to be pregnant again and my beautiful Ashlyn has only been gone two weeks. Two weeks!!!! Has it really been that long since I said goodbye to my sweet baby girl? I've been holed up in the house and not much fun, I keep sending Logan to go be with friends and relatives which he loves. It doesn't really matter much to me because I know I am not agood mother to him right now. I just want to cry.

On February 2 we had a fetal echocardiogram performed by Dr. L at our local hospital. I had been introduced to her before and she was so very wonderful to us and treated us amazingly. She informed us that our baby had developed a form of congenital heart disease called AVC or atrioventricular canal. We were informed that it could be treated by surgery after birth and that because it had been caught so early and because we could make a plan for treatment that our chances of success and of our baby living a long and happy life were very high.

On February 3 we met with another specialist and discussed the surgery that would be performed and discussed doing an amniocentesis to make sure there were no chromosomal defects that would also need treatment or preparation.

On February 5 we had an amniocentesis performed.

On February 6 Geoff told me he had been having an affair with a mutual friend and he moved out of our home.

On February 8 I began having contractions that would not stop and was admitted to the hospital. I honestly don't remember alot of what happened while I was there but I know I was given a lot of different things and I was so exhausted that I spent a lot of time passed out. Logan stayed with his grandparents. I was put on hospital bedrest. They spent 4 days monitoring me very closely because the contractions would not stop but the baby was not in excessive distress and my water had not broken and I wasn't bleeding.

On February 14 my water broke and I was told there was nothing else that could really be done. My fluid levels were far too low and before I knew it the cerclage had been removed and I was holding my tiny baby girl in my arms alone in the room. I named her Ashlyn Faith. She lived for one minute outside of my body by some miracle. She was 5 1/4" long and weighed 6.2 oz. She was absolutely tiny and so perfect. I was told that the amnio may have had something to do with our loss but they can't be sure. I am still waiting for the results from it. I went home physically fine on February 16 without my baby. I requested that an autopsy be done and was told that I will have the results of the amnio by this Friday.

God bless you all and your beautiful babies.

Needing forgiveness

I am so sorry to all of the wonderful women out there whose blogs I follow but haven't read recently or commented on at all! I know that we all have our problems and I feel bad that mine have stopped me from participating in the lives of those that I care about despite not knowing especially since I am stuck here in bed or on the couch most of the time. I have no real excuse for it but I guess I am wallowing in my own self pity most of the time. It's so much easier than dealing with my problems especially the ones involving Geoff because I don't know what to say to him!

To give a bit more information as to what went on recently my cerclage was placed on January 19. I was told that my cervix was dilated to 3.1 and that terrified me, also that my cervix had apparently undergone some trauma which I had no idea of because nobody had ever mentioned that to me before. I was told it was a miracle that we had not lost the baby and I thanked GOD for being there with me, holding my hand and watching over our baby to keep the baby safe and inside of me! GOD IS GOOD! On January 20 one of the nurses who is a close friend of mine snagged a doppler and brought it in because I had asked, she turned it on and noticed that the heartbeat was kind of irregular. I told her that didn't surprise me because previously my baby seemed to be a little wiggler and both the Ob and midwife had problems keeping track of the heartbeat. Nobody ever told me that they thought maybe the heartbeat was actually irregular. She told me it was probably nothing but I mentioned it to the Ob who came in with my midwife and did an ultrasound to check. I had never wanted this many ultrasounds in any pregnancy! But there it was, the baby looked fine even though it wasn't an intensive scan and the Ob said things looked fine but when she zoomed in on the heart and turned on the audible monitor something was obviously off. We had previously thought that the baby was just squirming because the ultrasounds I had so far weren't really in depth and the baby was moving a lot. But this time the baby wasn't moving much at all, I think he or she was napping, and the heartbeat was definitely irregular.

I was so lost!

So we were scheduled to meet with a pediatric cardiologist on February 2 to have a fetal echocardiogram performed. I am positively terrified of this even though I know that it's totally noninvasive and that there is every possibility that nothing is actually wrong and it's just an irregular heartbeat or something else that is not as big of a problem overall as an actual heart condition. But I am still scared because I don't know what to expect. I had an older sister that died when she was 2 long before I was born, because of a heart condition (I don't remember what and will have to look before the appointment to see what it was) and I often forget about that because I never knew her and to be honest she wasn't really talked about in our household.

So that is that and hopefully everything will start looking up soon. I cried for so long this morning to Geoff and he finally agreed that we will go see a Christian marriage counselor. She may even be able to come to us which would be amazing because I don't really want to have to go out more than I have to right now!

Please pray with me.

Dear God,

There are people in Haiti right now and all over the world who are suffering. Right now they are questioning their faith and they are praying so hard for You to help them. They KNOW that You are there with them and You are watching over them! YOU ARE AMAZING! You have saved so many lives and rescued so many souls that should have not survived as long as they did and they all credit YOU for staying with them in their hearts!

I ask now that you be with my family and I as we travel down this long and dark road. I know that sometimes we are given trials and that our faith is tested. I have been tested before and I know that YOU ARE GOOD! Please help me be the best child of Your Son, Jesus Christ that I can possibly be. Please help my husband do the same and please watch over my beautiful babies, both the ones that are here on earth with us and our beautiful angel who is waiting for us in Heaven.

Please also watch over the mothers who have lost their babies at any point and those who will unfortunately lose their children in the future. The pain that mothers of angels suffer when they lose their babies is unlike any other and only YOU know what we feel, God! You are there beside us because You gave Your Son, Jesus Christ so that we may be saved and join You in Heaven! Your love is AMAZING!

In Jesus' Name,

AMEN!

Everything is going wrong

At least that's what it feels like sometimes.

Things have been so hard recently. Geoff and I still are disagreeing on some things that I thought were common sense when we discussed them before we were married. I can't believe after all this time suddenly his thoughts have changed and we no longer agree on the fundamentals of our marriage. I am heartbroken because I want badly to go to therapy with him but he has said he doesn't think it's necessary! He won't talk to me or to our pastor or to a therapist and to make things worse I couldn't go right now even though I want to so badly.

I was put on temporary bedrest thanks to some bleeding that was totally unexplained. It went away for a while and we all thought everything was ok but it started again and the Ob that my midwife works with said that she believes I have an incompetent cervix. I had a stitch put in place 3 days ago and have been put back on bedrest. That is so difficult to do with a little boy running around who just wants me to be able to play with him and pay attention to him! I don't know what to do with myself right now. On top of that at a recent appointment I was told that the heartbeat sounded irregular. I have no idea what to do right now. We will be traveling to our nearby Children's hospital to have a fetal echocardiogram done. It will likely be vaginal which doesn't make me happy but it will be ok! At least that part will be. I have no idea right now if everything else will be.

I know that science has come so far recently and that so many medications and surgeries exist that can fix things like heart defects but I feel like I am going insane over here. Life has gone in a spiral since the day I lost Olivia and I feel so alone and so scared for Logan and for the baby I'm carrying now.

Please help me pray.

Dear God,
You are an Almighty God and I know You are with the people of Haiti now, looking over them and loving each and every one of them as they go through the horrible things they are experiencing. They are in my heart too and I pray for all of them every day. They have lost so much and there are so many families that have lost at least one person who was beloved and important. I hope that what little help we can provide does some good and that You are with the people of Haiti in the following years as they recover from this disaster.

I also ask that You see to please guide me through what I am experiencing right now. Please help guide Geoff to see that our marriage and family are worthwhile and that I love him very much and want to help him become a better person and a better Christian and I want to help him exalt Your holy Name!

Please watch over my unborn baby as well, help him or her grow strong and stay in as long as possible so that he or she may be born healthy and strong and live a long life. Please be with me and with the baby as we work to reach our 30 week goal, and please help ensure that the baby's heart is strong and normal.

You are an Almighty God and wonderful and I exalt Your Name! God is with us all and You are our strength!

Amen.